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Joseph Natoli avers that "what we think comprises a 'good education' has already been affected by market values." He observes further, "Organizations come into being by solving problems. The problem solver is a corporate asset."  Whereas Natoli treats problem-solving and critical thinking as mutually-exclusive, I contend that critical thinking has been reduced in popular parlance problem-solving.  As in the coming of Thursday nights to be reckoned by college students are a weekend night, here too business schools have been the conduit wherein critical thinking has gained primacy over even the higher analytical and synthetic thinking activities (which are not limited to problems, and, in fact, can transcend them even in problem-solving). The schools have also been the conduit wherein the power-point presentation in business has come to the classroom, as if lecturing were merely presenting. To be sure, there is nothing out of place for problem-solving and presentations in the corporate world. All the power to them--or maybe not. Maybe this is the problem wherein corporate customs know no bound, and thus feel no self-restraint as they over-spill onto disparate domains as though spoiled children. My contention is that the easy slide onto college campuses of both critical thinking reduced to problem-solving and presentations reduced to bullet-points has conflated, in effect, vocation and education. Even worse is the baleful portent of education being reduced to training. It is bad enough when a business school becomes "commercialized" in this respect. Faculties of Liberal Arts and Science schools ought not to have appropriated so much from commercial education (and ultimately corporations) without paying sufficient attention to the negative impacts on pedegogy. Teaching by power-point, for example, may cut off higher forms of thinking; problem-solving may involve losing "why?" to "how?"

One might ask: where have the scholars in the schools of education been as corporate ways have made such inroads in academia?  Why haven't education faculties written more the funnelling effects on pedegogy of critical thinking as problem-solving and teaching as presentation?  In December, 2010, the National Council on Teacher Quality and U.S. News & World Report announced plans to grade more than a thousand schools of education. The deans of several of these schools objected that the teacher quality council’s methods for arriving at ratings were not transparent enough and were not supported by research. Course information, textbooks and admissions selectivity are, according to these officials, too superficial.  That may be so, but it could nevertheless be the case that the school officials were nervous about being graded because they had a sense that education schools had been asleep at the wheel as universities (and presumably high schools) have come unwittingly to embrace corporate practices at the expense of that which is sui generis, or unique, in education. 

Brian Kelly, the editor of U.S. News, said the push-back from education schools was evidence of “an industry that doesn’t want to be examined. These teacher-education programs are hugely important and not very well scrutinized. This is coming at a time when you have this tremendous national push for improvements in teacher quality: Who’s teaching the teachers?”  Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education, said that many, if not most, teacher-training programs are mediocre. “It is time to start holding teacher-preparation programs more accountable for the impact of their graduates on student learning." According to The New York Times, "Education schools have faced criticism frequently over the years. They are faulted by a recent wave of education advocates as emphasizing education theory over hands-on classroom training, and as graduating teachers with weak academic skills." Rather than theory, however, faculties of education schools may have been absorbed in various ideological movements at the expense of being oriented to knowledge, with K-12 teachers buying into the fads at the expense of even the basic subject-matter of their courses.

For example, process-learning was at one time the rage in some high schools. In this movement, teachers threw out their course textbooks in the mistaken assumption that the process of being educated itself proffers such content. However, focusing on learning how to read, for example, does not include a systematic coverage of a given course's subject-matter; instead, the latter is relegated in a hit or miss manner. I once heard a high school civics teacher at a suburban school brag that he had put the U.S. Government textbooks in the school basement and was instead showing movies on immigrants in the U.S. How from this "alternative teaching" approach were his students to learn about federalism and the separation of powers, as well as about the U.S. Senate, House, Supreme Court and Presidency?

Although the misguided "alternative" movements have typically been inflicted on K-12 education, the education scholars' various sidetracks have not only sidetracked the scholars themselves from developing improved teaching techniques oriented to learning a given content of knowledge; the causes that have been at the expense of education (i.e., serving other agendas) have also distracted the zealots from even being able to detect what was occurring on their own campuses, let alone putting their pedegogical expertise at the service of their colleagues, university-wide. It is almost as though college professors got bored with their respective bodies of knowledge and wandered off to pay with new toys from business. Antethetically, I contend that even in business schools the focus should be on knowedge--explaining the phenomenon of business through its various disciplines rather than becoming virtual corporations.  In other words, even business schools can be academic. The best ones are. They have not substituted what they are with what they are studying. Therefore, resisting the encroachments of corporate culture on to academia, I recommend that university faculties and academic administrators recommit themselves to the university's unique, or sui generis, situs and essence.

There is much to do on college-level pedegogy without wandering off onto other pastures.  Exams, for example, should be devised and used based on tests for their validity (is an 80% on a given test really a "good" understanding of the knowledge of the course so far?) and reliability (consistency from test to test). I suspect that test-making and grading are far from systematic, perhaps including such spurious assumptions that only a certain proportion of a class can get A's, or that A's go down to 85% because there is a gap from there to 81%. What is it about the particular test and the body of knowlege covered that makes getting a 90% a measure of excellent knowledge?  Typically, graders simply parrot the custom wherein 90-100 is an A, 80-89 is a B, etc. However, what if a test is made more difficult, or less so?  How should the percentage intervals be adjusted? In short, getting back to basics means thinking about and operationalizing what "excellent," "good," and "satisfactory" mean in the context of learning knowledge.  Compounding the problem of what a grade means is the obfuscation of grades as measurements of knowledge learned and grades as compensation for work done. I suspect the transmutation of a grade into compensation is yet another instance of corporate culture finding its way into academia via business schools. The conduit here are business school administrators and faculty who confuse themselves with what they are studying (i.e., corporations). To give a group an A for having put a lot of work into a presentation, or for being dressed well, is essentially to pay the group for its effort, rather than to measure the extent of knowledge learned. Even assessing a skill is closer to rewarding practice than measuring knowledge learned; knowledge is not skill, and vice versa. 

With a sort of cultural imperialism in full swing at business schools, the faculties of other schools cannot afford to be sidetracked or led astray without seriously undermining their own distinctive raison d'etre. Just as what is good for GM is not necessarily good for America, what commercialized business schools believe is in their interest qua corporations producing skills is not necessarily good for a university as a whole (or even for the business schools). That school of education faculties have stood by, occupied elsewhere, while business school practices and understandings have been allowed to perculate through other schools does indeed implicate the pegegogical experts.

Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/education/09teachers.html?scp=1&sq=grading%20schools%20of%20education&st=cse
http://www.truth-out.org/our-market-regime-and-public-education67474

At the end of March, 2010, Warren Buffet spoke to business students at Columbia University.  A student asked him whether being ethical in business come from the home or a business ethics course.  Warren quickly answered that it is learned in the home.  Jeffrey Skilling of Enron was not simply applying knowledge when he acted unethically in hiding the company’s debt in “unrelated” partnerships; rather, what he knew he applied according to what he valued.  Values are not learned in the way that, say, 5=5=10 is learned; there is a feeling component—an ought—that goes along with one’s sense of what he or she values.  In other words, a person values X because she feels that X is important—not because she knows more about X (although this could be incidentally the case).

A business ethics course ought to be designed such that the students understand ethical principles and how they apply to ethical issues in business as well as to the business system itself.   Although understanding more about ethical principles in ethical decision-making, for example, can help one in being ethical, the understanding itself is not to make one ethical.  The focus, in other words, ought to be on the learning of knowledge rather than on somehow turning people into ethical human beings as if they were robots to be programmed or customers to be convinced.

Some might agree that ethics courses do not make people ethical (and ought not be designed as such), but disagree with the emphasis being on understanding and knowledge. Such “commercial business school”  advocates stress the “how to do” over explanation.  But this is to confuse training with educating.  Following bullet-points on how to make ethical decisions, for example, does not involve synthetic or analytical thought; at most, critical thinking is needed.  I submit that understanding ethical principles and their relevance to business is of value not only educationally (in terms of learning knowledge), but also in terms of business practice.  That is, knowing more about something—studying it in order to explain it—informs one’s approach to it in practice.

For example, explaining the structural conflict of interest in the rating agencies getting a cut on the securities sold that the rate can enable students to understand what a structural conflict of interest is and thus how it can be recognized.  This understanding can come into play in the business world if the former student finds herself in such a conflict or in a position to remove one (e.g., a regulator).  That the rating agencies’ conflict of interest was not addressed by Senator Dodd’s proposed financial reform bill in March, 2010 suggests the practical peril in not understanding what a structural conflict is.  Even if Senator Dodd didn’t want to solve the problem, had enough people understood it sufficiently to recognize it and wanted to remove it, the senator would have faced more pressure to include a fix. 

Perhaps if more business ethics lecturers and professors become less oriented to trying to turn their students into ethical managers, more ethical problems would be recognized and solved.  This is not to imply that every applied ethical issue can be solved, but even here understanding the competing ethical principles that are in play can make such issues less daunting, even in terms of being understood.  In other words, understanding and explanation, rather than how to, are key to education (as opposed to training), even where knowledge involves practical realms of life.  It is far too easy to become short-sighted, either in being obsessed with making others ethical or in reducing knowledge to how-t0 bullet-points on Power Point.  It is much harder to focus on the knowledge instead of shying away from it.  In the wake of Enron and the financial crisis of 2008, the world is calling out for better understanding of such things—not recipes and ideology.

Sadly, most business ethicists in business schools have scant education in ethics per se; most of their education is in management and corporate social responsibility (matching corporations with societal norms—which are not ethical principles).  Such business ethicists have little regard for the basic discipline of philosophy, of which ethics is a field (and business ethics a subfield).  It is of course important that a business ethicist understand the phenomenon of business, but it is also vital that he or she know ethical principles beyond simply “rights, duty and utility.”  In the midst of such a superficial knowledge, it is no surprise that ideology (i.e.,  imposing one’s own values) and how-to’s would take over.   The ethical dimension does not pertain exclusively to the content of such courses; the qualifications of the professors and lecturers as well as their typical agendas ought to be understood from the vantage point of a knowledge of ethics (as well as pedagogy).  This might be a case of the emperors wearing no clothes, even as the modern moralizers swear by their sterling vestments.  Unfortunately, the public does not get a look at the men and women behind the curtain.  If Enron and the financial crisis of 2008 are at all of concern to us in terms of future like occurances, it might be in our interest (as well as being an ethical obligation) to recognize and rectify the nudity going on behind the curtain. Ideally, a clamor would rise up for a better understanding of the ethical principles that are in play (or missing); we would demand such knowledge from those hired to teach it.  Yet there is the matter of the illusion of expertise being projected by the club and the general perception that this is as good as it gets.  But this is crazy, even if it is typically taken for normal.  Things are not always as they seem, and they can be improved even if it is not in their present protectors’ self-interest.